08 October 2013

My city has become smaller than ever.

It's been a month of me living in Salt Lake City and I have found myself becoming more and more comfortable calling it my home. Of course, I've not hesitated to mention that several times already.

The view from The City Library

All the streets, the sounds and the energy of my little city has become so familiar to me. From riding crowded trains at night to commuting to work or shopping in the city. I'm in love with life right now.

A late train ride home one evening.

But I haven't blogged in a very long time! It has been just over 4 weeks. And I can assure you, plenty has happened in that time frame. For starters, I am more than a month into being a vegetarian and that is going fantastic. Classes are swell, and I am learning a ton. I've gotten to go home twice since school started and it was very nice being able to see my parents again. I had an oral exam in French today, and I feel like I did pretty well with that. It was actually a really cool feeling being able to use what limited French I've studied to have a coherent if somewhat broken conversation with another speaker.

The view on the way home to my dorm ever afternoon.

I think I'm really taking root here.

Like I was talking about in the title of this blog post, the longer I live in this city, the more I realize how interconnected all the different pieces of it are. I've seen more of it than ever and it is all coming down to scale for me. It really does seem smaller than ever.

Although, living without a car 15 minutes outside of the city center, I also realize how big a small city like Salt Lake City is compared to the human scale. In my Urban Ecology and Architecture classes, we talk an awful lot about the human scale. How it relates to buildings and cities and society as a whole. While the Salt Lake metropolitan area only has a population around 1.5 million, the city compared to a 5 foot 7 inch 18 year old is physically large. Especially when to be navigated on bike and foot.

Utah is really beautiful. Even (and maybe especially) the urban areas. Heck, the picture above was taken in City Creek canyon between the capitol heights neighborhood (named for the capitol building complex seen in the picture) and the Avenues. This spot is seriously 8 minutes walking distance from Temple Square and downtown Salt Lake City. I love living in the mountain west where natural settings are set in such close proximity to more urbanized living.

And speaking of beautiful.....

Look at this handsome fella. His name is Tree and he is a fantastic human being. Keep tabs on him, because he is going to be sticking around. This past weekend, in between sessions of conference we walked through the Avenues to visit his childhood home. We also went through City Creek Canyon, Temple Square, ate yummy pizza and then saw the new movie Gravity.

Tree and I in Temple Square

Holy freaking moley Gravity was awesome. I highly recommend it.

I really wish I had been keeping better tabs on what has been happening in my life. Frankly, the last few weeks feel like a blur anyway. With mid terms rolling past, I feel like I've been here much longer than I'm sure I have been. With the repetition of classes, work and studying, weekends are how I measure time. And most weekends I feel like awesome people are coming to visit me in Salt Lake, or I am going to visit awesome people in Provo or I am going back to my parents house for the weekend to rest and relax with some home cooked meals. After a dozen of these weekends, I can't seem to remember which happened when or with who.

So I am making a resolution to give more updates and whatnot about my life. That way not only can all y'all here more about my college adventures, but I can also record more of my first year away from home for my own memory's sake.